KEY POINTS

1. Characteristic of Adolescents

A) Because of this transitional time in their life, it makes it especially difficult for secondary-school teachers to organize writing workshops

• traditional writing workshops have been "prescribed, teacher-assigned steps." However, that made is "not really a writing workshop"

B) Adolescents are in a stage where they are trying to identify themselves in a diversified world

• they want social acceptance, but are antagonistic/resistant to figures of authority (parents, teachers, educators)
• they're searching for their identity, self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-definition (self-consciousness realization p. 157-58)

2. Teachers must value 1:1 relationships

A) It's important to believe in the power of small, individual encounters with students because this will establish trust between students

• conversing about papers, rather than leaving ambiguous comments on the margins (awk, conf)
• trying to help them bring their passions into the classroom

3. Teachers must be flexible and run with the class' energy

A) Observe the pace of the class and see where the energy is coming from
B) Respond and build off of the students' energies and intentions
C) Teachers need to "see where the energy in [their] classroom is and go with it" (176)

4. More Engaging Workshops

A) Have students take ownership of it

• let them choose what they want to write about because they have to care about what they're writing
• they need to write about the "poignant, turbulent events of their lives"
• cultivate a culture of peer conferring
  • adolescents sometimes are apprehensive about giving critiques because it feels like they're criticizing their peers, and social acceptance is in jeopardy
  • teach students how to give helpful, thoughtful feedback (create a class list of good writing from an excerpt and use that as a criteria of good writing)

B) Workshops = community

• build a "we-ness" concept in the classroom
  • work on a class project that utilizes the students' individual gifts and talents

Our questions:

1. The author mentions about an idea that we need to write because writing helps us to understand our lives. But how can teachers explain this to our students or prove to them that writing is very important because it helps us understand our lives better?
2. The author mentions a lot about how teenagers tend to resist anything teachers invite them to do, and this is just how they behave at this age. So is it possible that we can think of some practical ways to take advantage of this characteristic to get them involved into the writing workshop? (Maybe teachers think of some ways to provide something unique for them in the workshop?)
3. The author also suggests teachers to start with each student’s interest and intentions to engage them. However, considering the number of students a teacher may have in his or her class, is it possible to get to know everyone’s specific interest and think of a way to interact with him or her? Or are there more effective ways to do this? (We are thinking maybe teachers can group the students with similar interests?)